The directors of national intelligence and the National Security Agency say they are in discussions with the White House about whether their conversations with President Donald Trump are protected by executive privilege.
Senate Democrats grew increasingly incredulous and visibly frustrated Wednesday with intelligence chiefs testifying at a hearing after Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers repeatedly said they would not discuss their private conversations with President Donald Trump.
"In my time of service", Coats said, "I have never been pressured, I've never felt pressure to intervene or interfere, in any way, with shaping intelligence in a political way". Trump has called the Russian Federation investigation a "witch hunt".
Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-DE) - the chairs and ranking Democrats of the Senate Judiciary Committe and its National Security Subcommittee - sent a letter Thursday to Columbia Law Professor Daniel Richman demanding he provide them with the original memo he supposedly leaked to CNN on Comey's say-so.
Both declined to discuss their conversations with Trump, answering in general terms.
But the key moment came when Karl asked the president whether he'd be willing to rebut those claims under oath-because, after all, Comey was also under oath when he said them.
The White House and USA intelligence community on Wednesday said they backed making permanent a law that allows for the collection of digital communications of foreigners overseas and that pass through US phone or internet providers, escalating a fight in Congress over privacy and security. McCabe said the FBI, under special counsel Robert Mueller, is continuing its Russian Federation investigation "in an appropriate and unimpeded way" in the wake of Comey's firing.
Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe is also scheduled to testify.
Police name third terrorist after London Bridge attack
The officer, who is a rugby player, was one of the first on the scene and ran towards the attackers despite being unarmed. According to the Corriere della Sera newspaper Zaghba's Italian mother lives in Bologna in the north of the country.
The hearing is focused on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), though there are likely to be questions involving the firing of former FBI Director James Comey and Russian interference in the 2016 US election. Comey describes at length a February 14 meeting in the Oval Office in which he believed Trump asked him to drop any investigation of Flynn's contacts with Russia's ambassador to the U.S.
In an explosive statement on the eve of his testimony to Congress, Comey said Trump raised the sensitive Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into Russian meddling in the U.S. election in multiple discussions, leaving him deeply uneasy over whether the president was attempting to interfere.
"Why are you not answering the questions?"
Coats, who was appointed by Trump and is a former senator and congressman from IN, said he would answer questions about the matter during a closed hearing scheduled for Wednesday afternoon.
The Justice Department then appointed another former FBI director, Robert Mueller, as special counsel in the investigation.
"The president said, 'I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.' I didn't move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed", Comey said. But critics say it also gathers an unknown amount of electronic data from Americans.
The committee is holding a closed session after lunch with staff about the technicalities of the law that allows the intelligence community to surveil foreign targets.
"No collusion, no obstruction", Trump told a White House press conference in reference to the twin controversies dogging his administration - accusations his aides colluded with the Russian effort to tilt the vote, and that he sought to block a probe related to the matter.
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